


Les Fruits de Mer

by Chaos_Elemental



Category: Runescape (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Horror, Inspired by H. P. Lovecraft, Sea Shanty II, Sea Slug (Runescape), Slime and general nastiness, Squick, Witchaven
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:09:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27627263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chaos_Elemental/pseuds/Chaos_Elemental
Summary: The accounts of an unnamed trawler as he encounters strange things on the Fishing Platform.
Kudos: 8





	Les Fruits de Mer

**Author's Note:**

> CW: Body horror, blood, death.
> 
> Written for the Clan Quest short horror story competition.

_Found in an old rowboat, washed ashore near Keep Le Faye. Though the journal’s pages are damp, the writing is legible._

**Septober 20**

Uncle Marsh is sending for me again — he said it's frightfully busy down south, and they require all the assistance they can procure with the catches. Mother brought it up at the dinner table tonight, said that I’d best go down and aid them. 

Of course, there’s nothing around Hemenster now that I can use as an excuse. The carp season has quite finished, and the charters all want long-term employment. The Wizard’s Tower _still_ has yet to correspond with me on my application, of course, and I don’t want to be on a ship halfway to Karamja when they accept me. 

I might just take old Marsh up on his offer. The pay is good — Saradomin knows we need it — and it would only be a week or two. Something to get me out of this damned little town, at least. 

Anything, really, if it gets mother to stop nagging me about going to that blasted Fishing Platform. 

**Septober 22**

I bid goodbye to Lilah today. She wept when I told her I was leaving, one would think that two weeks were an eternity to a girl. I told her I would return soon enough, and that I’d bring her a present from Ardougne. 

The walk down was quite peaceful. Spring has taken hold of the land, for sure, and all the flax and wheat fields were sprung high when I passed them, with tender grass up to my ankles all the way. I sighted the Legend’s Guild, too, for the first time since when I was a boy — the place has acquired a rather grand-seeming new statue up front, likely for some great warrior that joined their ranks.

There were oddly few travelers for this time of year, I’ll remark. There was a merchant here and there, but nobody on the way.

There was that singular family — I recall them now. Their cart was stacked high with possessions, two young children bundled in the front, the mother and father pulling them along. Likely they were unable to finance a teleport if they were to resort to such a vulgar form of transport. 

I had asked them where they were coming from. Witchaven, the man said, almost with a hollow laugh. 

“Why are you going?” I had asked them. He let out that little laugh again, though I reflect it was quite without mirth. 

“The damn platform’s draining us dry,” he told me. “Plenty of fish for the city. None for little Witchaven. Can’t catch anything that can’t make it to shore.”

“Why not work on the platform, then?” I’d asked him. “You seem to know the trade well enough.”

He shook his head. “We stay out of the deeper waters. Things there no-one wants in their net. You’d stay from there, too, if you know what’s best for you.”

I had asked him what in Gielinor he meant by that, but he merely shook his head again. 

“Witchaven looks after her own, boy,” he said, picking up the cart handle. “I’d recommend that you do the same.”

I mulled over that strange conversation the rest of the way, slowing my pace as I pondered. Did he speak of sea monsters? There _were_ the trolls near Piscatoris, and the mogres near Mudskipper’s Point, but those were far off, and nothing a mercenary or two couldn’t clear. 

_Sea monsters.._. What nonsense. A thing for fairytales and the Fourth Age. You’d think Elvarg had come to turn everything to a crisp, the way that man looked. He probably burned driftwood in the fireplace and went dotty.

Whatever the case, he wasn’t joking about the platform pulling away the income. 

I knew something was wrong when the path below me turned to mud — saltwater muck, sucking at my boots along the path. It hadn’t rained recently, from what I could recall, but I was suddenly hit with a wave of dampness from the shore, the likes of which I never had felt before. Every cranny of me felt invaded by a feeling of water, as though the ocean itself attempted to crawl into my skin.

Then the smell. Every portside town has a little whiff to it, of course, but the stench that hit me was simply… _off._ It smelled of rot and offal — things left too long in the heat of the day, turned fat and bloated and flyblown. Sweet and cloying, it curled up my nose and slid down my throat, turned all the keener with the moisture in the air. I had to stop and retch right there, the taste of bile in my throat so more welcoming than the hideous odour that enveloped me. 

Such was that I could not acclimate to the smell, leaving me in a state of mild illness as I continued along the path. The stench grew worse, and the sights grew unkindlier as I approached the little sea settlement. 

Witchhaven seemed almost dilapidated. Half the buildings were sunk into the sand, rotting planks blackened against the paling shore as the ground overtook them. Old shells crunched under my boots as I continued — dead limpets, pulled to the surface and left to fester. 

There were other bits of debris with that — old lobster cages and bits of netting, broken planks, skeletons of boats left to be eaten by the mud, all black and barnacle-encrusted as everything else.

Had some great disaster befell the town, I thought to myself? Had a great tidal wave come and swept through here, drenching it all with seawater and rot? But I had not heard of such a thing occurring — surely news from home would reach us by way of old Marsh. 

The old church still stood, thank goodness, but even its sanctity did not prevent the pervasive sea mud from creeping up its sides. The light inside was dark, though I could swear I could see some shadow flitting about inside — one I did not stomach to investigate. 

I looked about the town in the dying light of the sunset, hoping to see some modicum of normalcy — of the pleasant seaside place of my childhood, the soft sands under my feet, the smell of frying fish, the easy chatter of the locals — but none such remained. What houses that still stood were boarded up, seemingly abandoned. 

I turned to the sea, vast and familiar, to try and seek some comfort there. But even the old shipwrecks seemed ghastly stark on the reddened sky, glistening with the ever-present dampness in what little sunlight remained, a horrible forest of rotten timber that cut into the skyline with inanimate madness. 

The fishing platform was visible, far over the water, and I could see the first lamps being lit on its edges as the fisherman returned home. Even their faint, human figures on the horizon seemed ghostly. They were small, scuttling, flickering, and I could not discern their intention. 

Feeling my stomach twist, I headed to the familiar home of my uncle, somewhat relieved to find it still standing. Marsh has yet to return, and the fire I have lit in the hearth seems more a bulwark than a mere source of warmth. 

Witchaven, what has become of you? This town seems a husk; a rotting carcass, a starved leviathan cleaned by the creatures of the sea. I would only hope the bounty the platform provides shall revive what remains — if it is possible to revitalize. 

I await my uncle, and tomorrow’s sun, with patience and fear. 

**Septober 23**

How does the daylight improve nearly anything’s countenance, even by some degree! My uncle returned shortly after I finished last night’s passage, smelling blessedly fresher than what plagued the town when I first approached. There is a stiff wind today, which has eased the assault upon my senses, and I entered the day with brighter hopes than I arrived. 

My uneasement, perhaps, was from how much the town has changed — there has been somewhat of an exodus due to the dearth in shoreline catches, my uncle has told me, and the locals’ apparent reluctance to join the crews of the platform. 

“The old folks of Witchaven are set in their ways,” Marsh said, as he set the rowboat to the water that morning. “Took them time to get used to me when I moved from Hemenster. I doubt they’d change their whole lifestyle for the sake of the platform.”

For what, I cannot imagine why. The trip to the new fishing hub was pleasant as can be, with the sun setting the sea into a lovely azure as we rowed along, and the breeze even pushing our way. 

The platform itself is a marvel — a finely-constructed thing, it holds well against the shifting waves you find so near to the middle jungle isles. The nets were laden by the time we arrived, and I spent much of my day hauling in the latest catches.

The cleverest function by far, I think, is the storage pools. The platform contains a central walkway, the left of which consists of two others, always surrounding a pair of enclosed sections of sea. These have been walled by weighted underwater nets, allowing for the fisherman to deposit live fish into a holding pen of sorts; this ensures freshness and balances the loads on days with lighter shipments. 

It’s quite ingenious; the fish stay alive until they are needed, fed with old bait until they are hauled to air once more, off to Ardougne and the surrounding areas. Better still is that they have somehow managed to repel the sea birds from snatching at the free bounty — in fact, in all my time there that day, a saw nary a gull or a tern picking at the pool or any of the catches, which I found quite odd. 

No matter. When the day’s work was done, and the crew retreated to the shore, I was almost glad to see the sad little town Witchaven has become, if only for the promise of supper and a bed. The other fishermen are from Ardougne, it seems; in fact, few, if any, went to any of the little shacks neighbouring my uncles’, and instead headed up the pathway to the city. 

I turned to Marsh to inquire of this, and he had simply shrugged. 

“Witchaven looks after her own,” he’d said, simply. “And those not her own, don’t stay.”

And, perhaps, I wonder if I can blame them.

**Septober 24**

Essianday today, which we were granted off. I took the liberty to explore Ardougne, an opportunity I was unable to partake in as a child; and indeed, its gleaming streets and greenery were almost shocking to my eyes, having seen nothing but sea and mud-brown for the past two days.

I had but a day’s pay on me, but I nonetheless bought a little trinket for Lilah. It’s a trifling thing, just a small pewter locket, but I am sure it shall amuse her upon my return. 

Few of the people in the city seem willing to speak of Witchaven. I spoke a little of it with the silversmith, and heard much of what I already know; it was once bustling, until Vallance authorized the building of the platform, which was completed some months ago.

I told him of my visits when I was a child, and the smith had simply shaken his head, perhaps in regret. 

“Always been a funny place, that town,” he said. “Treacherous. Rocky outcrops along the breakers — been the doom of many a ship for years. Even said there was a witch there, once. Would brew storms in eggshells and lure men to their deaths.”

I had nodded along. The old tale was regular fireside fodder — even Marsh would call the howling night gales ‘witch’s singing.’ 

Pure nonsense, of course. The town’s shore was no place for ships, which is why I would suspect the superstition of avoiding the deeps. The platform can’t sail, which resolves that issue. 

“My cousin in the archaeology guild did a little research round there,” the silversmith continued. “Said the old ruins were older than the rest of the place — older than the gnomish empire, even. If you’re given to it, you may want to give them an examine.”

I’d simply nodded, hoping to extricate myself from a rather unproductive conversation, and made my swift retreat. As I perambulated the streets of Ardougne, his comment on the old ruins caught my idle mind’s attention. They were no great secret, of course — many a Witchaven child could play simple hiding games around the old structure — but I’d never paid it much attention.

I passed by the old pillars as I returned to the town, and stopped to give them a perfunctory inspection. They were the same as ever; crumbled, green and lichen-coloured. There was a slab of marble covering what some said was a great and terrible dungeon, filled with dragons and all a manner of horrors, though we had been forbidden from touching it as children.

I looked to it now, however, and to my shock, I saw it had been slightly dislodged. No more than a hair, but it now revealed a sliver of an entrance, a dark hole set into the ground. 

I kneeled down, tracing my fingers over the gap. To my disgust, the stone was covered in clammy slime, thick enough that my fingers resisted pulling away from the stone. As I did, a draft escape from it, chilling my flesh in its wake. It wafted over me, and I caught the hint of a scent — something old, like a room long left forgotten, carrying elements of sour rot and brine.

I leapt to my feet then, rushing back to Marsh’s house, where I immediately subjected my hands to a vicious scrubbing. I shall have to tell Mayor Hobson of this in the morning. 

Then again, I would rather like to put the image of such a thing from my mind. 

**Septober 25**

Little to report today. The mayor is out on business with the king, and I resolve to update him upon his return. 

The haul was good today. We brought in a good lot of sardine and mackerel, and even some flatfish from the deeper nets. 

I will remark upon something odd — when we were bringing in the flounder, with them came a remarkable quantity of small, wriggling creatures. They seemed, at a glance gastropodic, though they bore a set of tentacle-like antennae at their fronts. These appendages seemed prehensile, waving about in the air as the creatures struggled among the fish — and strangely, they ended in in little barbs, almost toothlike, perhaps meant to pierce or grip something.

I will say that I was quite disgusted by these little creatures, and instantly recoiled upon my closer observation of them. Marsh, however, merely laughed.

“They’re just sea slugs,” he said, flicking on off the platform with the tip of his boot. “We get them sometimes.”

This incident, I believe, likely means little; the only reason I record it is for posterity. I would only hope that my unease as this sight is unfounded. 

**Septober 27**

More slugs in the nets today; in fact, they are seeming to take a greater percentage of the catch. How odd for such a phenomenon that continues to persist; even when we switch the nets with larger holes, ones sure to catch our targeted fish and to leave behind such smaller creatures, it does not deter them. The slugs cling to the rope with their horrid little barbs and cluster themselves into large masses so that they do not slip through, but for what reason I cannot fathom. 

Much of my day was spent picking out the wretched little things from the piles. I am compelled to wear heavy gloves when I do so, for they bite. 

Such a curious thing for them to do, no less. The platform super, Bailey, told me they’re bottom feeders primarily, subsisting on whatever flotsam happens to drift down to the ocean floor. 

The sensation of their little teeth sinking into my thumb, pricking even through the thick leather of my gloves, convinces me otherwise.

**Septober 28**

Melancholy today. Lilah wrote me — I’ve been gone scarce a week and she already wishes me back. Normally I would brush aside her usual anxieties, but there is a growing part of me that is beginning to agree with her. 

Hobson is still out of town; when he will return, I do not know. I am tempted to march to East Ardougne’s castle myself and confront him, though Saradomin knows what shall become with me before the city knights turn me to a pincushion.

Worse still — our catches have become lighter and lighter with each passing day. When we found the overnight seemingly heavy with the first pull, I thought our dry spell was over. 

However, I was quickly disproved when we hauled it onto the platform. Instead of fish, there were slugs — wriggling, writhing clusters that spilled out and over the walkways. The wretched things exude slime, and this was deposited in great quantities over everything; it stuck those slugs to the nets and clung in great clear sheets and strings to everything it touched.

The platform itself was not enough to hold all of them, and some spilled back into the water, though a great many escaped this fate by clinging to the boards and nets and whatever their barbs could get a hold of.

The smell had returned — the sickening, rotten, fetid wave that washed over me when I first arrived at cursed Witchaven, and it came back with even greater force than before. The odour, and the sight before me, filled me with great revulsion. I stumbled, then, over to a patch where I could lean over the platform end and heave my stomach’s contents into the sea. 

The slime made it all the harder for me to coherently navigate the platform without falling off myself. As I slid and stumbled towards my destination, I felt the body of a slug underneath my boot. Before I could stop, it burst, making a wet little popping noise as it did. 

Against my better judgement, I looked down. 

The sea slug’s insides were bright red; visceral, more vibrant than that of a tuna’s. Instead, it seemed more like blood — human, almost, leaking thick crimson liquid onto the wood and sticking itself to my boot. 

I could take it no more. After vomiting over the platform’s edge, Marsh bade me to bed rest. As he rowed me back to the shore, I could see the fisherman sweeping the dreadful catch back into the ocean, their movements sullen. If this continues, and if the catches keep dwindling, then the platform experiment may all be ruined. 

Even now, however, that fact is not the one most unsettling to me. Whenever I close my eyes, I can still see it — the burst slug underneath my foot, innards spilt out like a popped balloon, red against the platform boards.

What do those creatures subsist on that would lend their viscera such a colour? I’ve only seen such insides, for a non-mammalian creature, in a smashed mosquito — and the only thing they consume is blood. 

It is now near midnight, and Marsh has not yet returned. I can see the lantern lights on the platform from the shore. I cannot see what is occurring on the platform. The figures I can observe move strangely — stumbling, drunken. The very thought of returning fills me with sickness; the idea of going back to the platform at night shocks me with fear. I shall depart in the morning, though I hesitate to imagine what I may find. 

**Septober 29**

I cannot continue this. I shudder to recall it; my hand shakes as I write it. Things are not as they seem in Witchaven, and I fear what seal we of the fishing platform have broken in our stumbling ineptitude. 

The morning dawned grey when I awoke. The sea had burped forth a pervasive fog that obscured everything not immediately in front of me — even looking out the window of Marsh’s abode, I could only see the dim outlines of the house next door. 

Usually, such obstruction would prevent us from attending to the platform, and I was preparing for a day staying in. That is, until I noticed that Marsh had not returned. 

The fear from the night before now returned. I perhaps should have checked the market at Ardougne or inspected the church, for those would be plausible explanations for his absence. But my anxieties were only confirmed when I saw that his rowboat — and indeed, the rowboats of all the other fishermen — was not at the dock. 

I should have waited for the fog to dissipate. I should have gone to seek the authorities, though how I would have found Ardougne or the Legend’s Guild in the mist, I do not know. Oh, I should not have rowed out to the Fishing Platform this morning! If Saradomin had any mercy for me, I would have gotten lost in the fog and ended up on the savage shores of Karamja. But such was not my fate.

I do not know how I managed to find the accursed structure in the mist — the sea, at least, was calm, though it felt eerily so. Never before I’ve seen its surface nearly smooth as glass, and my passage through the water was silent, up until my boat’s side knocked against the platform’s edge. 

The night lamps were still somehow lit, though they lent me little more than a yellow tinge through the dreadful thick fog. I looked about, seeking any sign of movement, but I could see none.

At a loss, I crept over the walkways, thankful that my work had lent me familiarity enough to do so by memory. I called out — for Marsh, for Bailey, for any other worker I’d come to know over the past week, but nothing replied. 

I wondered if I was perhaps mistaken in my journey when I reached the northern storage pool. It had been cruelly empty for the past two days due to the depletion in catches; however, now, I could hear something splash and wriggle in the water.

At that moment, I felt some small sense of relief. Perhaps a round of night fishing had paid off — if the crew was resting in the administrative building while the fog faded, then my fears were totally unfounded. 

With my newfound confidence, I thought to inspect this new bounty, and I pulled forth one of the trammel nets. It was lighter than I expected for the activity I observed, which should have been my first warning. As I pulled the net closer, I noticed that the mesh itself wasn’t moving — instead, it felt likeless, like a sail dragged through tater. 

I pulled the thing to the surface, expecting to see the silver gleam of flatfish or the dull green-grey of cod. But instead, I saw white — spindly, sharp, dirty-looking in the water and dim light, jostled together as it stuck into the mesh. 

The net was filled with fish skeletons. I saw the bones of flounder and swordfish and tuna and cod, all picked clean and left to tangle with one another, dead as anything and left to drift to the bottom of their prison. 

There were too many for this to be natural; I myself had seen the nets not a day before, and they had been unmarred by such a sight. I then dropped the net back into the water, my innards twisting with the same nausea I’d felt the day before. If this is what remained of the pool’s catch, then what had I seen in the water —?

My thoughts were then interrupted by the sound of footsteps, and I turned to see a humanoid figure stumble towards me. Its gait was unsteady, swaying and tottering if about to faint, and I feared it would fall into the ocean before it reached me. 

But reach me it did, and in the faith lamplight I could see it was one of my fellow fishers — Willem, who’d come from Ardougne for the catching season. 

I called out his name, but he did not respond. Instead, he kept advancing towards me, his stance still stumbling. I could see his face more clearly with every step, and now more clearly observe its pallor. 

It was waxy, shining and glistening in the morning damp, and Will’s neck was so swollen and bloated that it spilt over the collar of his jacket. His eyes were unfocused, glassy and glazed and locked on me as he approached; and every inch of skin upon him was a sickening yellow, as if drained of blood and replaced with something far viler. 

I froze, in that moment, every muscle locking onto itself and paralyzing me. Will reached towards me, and I felt his clammy hands gasp my forearms and squeeze with inhuman strength. His mouth opened, and from it came a wave of fishy stench — the one that had hounded me from when I first arrived, and that had invaded my lungs and body and very thoughts since. 

Will let out a wordless groan, wet and gargling as though he were already half-drowned. Seized by panic, I managed to wrench one hand free of his grip, grasping at the first object I could reach and swinging it at my captor. 

My improvised weapon turned out to be a dip neat — a solid, steel one, meant for hauling sharks and larger catches. It caught Will round the head with a sickening crack, and he crumpled to the dock boards.

I flung the net aside, catching him as he fell. His previous behaviour did not matter to me, at that moment; I only saw poor old Will, who’d I’d worked aside all this time, and who told me of his wife and children in the east city. Worried that I’d truly injured him, I felt about the unconscious man’s scalp for a head wound.

My fingers, then, touched something wet and squishy at the back of his head, and I feared it was his brains leaking into my hand. I turned him over, expecting to see a bright spurt of blood and shattered skull.

Instead, what I observed set my skin into a crawl, and my body seized with horror and disgust once more.

A fat sea slug, pulsing, writhing, its tail wriggling at the unexpected disturbance, was set at the base of Will’s skull. I could not see its head, for it was burrowed deeply into the flesh of his upper neck, its bloated little body half-hanging out of the entry wound it had inflicted. Its appendages, which had so nauseated me the day before, were now wrapped around the host’s neck, its barbs set in the skin for support. 

Bile rose to the back of my throat, as my blood ran cold in my veins. My fingers were barely able to grip onto the body of my former companion, and my mind turned to the blood-red viscera of the slug I’d trod on. 

It was then, to my horror, that the sea slug in Will’s neck pulsated. I suddenly felt the body I was holding shift, as Will began to rouse. 

I dropped my companion, barely able to stand as my head swam and my stomach spasmed. Will let out a feral growl, and I heard a dozen more throaty cries join him, rising from the mist all around me. 

I ran. I tripped and slid and fell and stumbled, flying over the walkways through the fog unseeable. Now and again I felt a pair of cold hands snatch me, or heard the clumsy clatter of a thrown net barely miss me, but I did not slow. When I reached my little rowboat, I did not stop to pray thanks — instead, I grabbed the oars and rowed, fast as my muscles would allow me, back to Witchaven. I sit here now, in Marsh’s empty house, and record this account if only so I do not go mad; or, perhaps, so that if I do, there will be some documentation of its cause. 

I do not know what transpired on the platform; what force compelled the men to pull those horrible things from the depths, or what force compels those creatures to control the men. Is it divine revenge, for diving too deep? Did the disgruntled villagers call it forth? 

Or is it a downfall manufactured by ourselves, for taking too much and too quickly of the fruits of the sea?

I do not know. Whatever it may be, I pray it does not reach beyond what it has. I have sent to Ardougne for aid, though it will likely be long before reinforcements arrive. 

Marsh is still on the platform, and I cannot let him go unheeded. I shudder to think of what may become of him; if he ends up a skeleton in the storing pool, or some vile monstrosity, I would not be able to forgive myself. 

I will depart at dawn, when this wretched fog clears. Whatever horrors my lie on the platform, I hope that I may save my poor uncle, and not be pulled to the same fate as my fellow fishermen. 

**Septober 30 - Wintumber 36**

_You are unable to read the rest of the journal’s pages, for they have been stuck together with a great quantity of slime._


End file.
